SALMAN KHAN: 1200 LESSONS IN MATH AND SCIENCE

对我这么一个数学智商零蛋的人，Salman Khan 是上帝的礼物。
Spencer Michels at the website of the PBS Newshour:

A 33-year-old math and science whiz kid -- working out of his house in California's Silicon Valley -- may be revolutionizing how people all over the world will learn math. He is Salman Khan, and until a few months ago he made his living as a hedge fund analyst. But he's become a kind of an unseen rock star in the online instruction field, posting 1200 lessons in math and science on YouTube, none of them lasting more than about 10 minutes. He quit his job at the hedge fund to devote full time to hisKhan Academy teaching efforts, which he does essentially for free...
Khan's story -- featured Monday on the NewsHour -- is inspiring. A math and science graduate of MIT with an MBA from Harvard, he was one of those math-savvy kids who did great in school, and then decided to make some money. As an Indian-American (born in New Orleans), education -- especially math and science -- were important in his household. But when one of his cousins, a seventh grader, told him at a family gathering that she was having trouble with math -- especially converting grams to kilograms -- he decided to help her, long distance. He devised a method where he talked to her via the computer, with a blackboard on the screen, and after a few weeks she started to get it. Her progress was speedy, and he decided that the method he'd improvised, would work for others.
So he began putting short math lessons on the Internet, never showing his face, but keeping it simple and direct. He has a great gift for communicating, for explaining math concepts that I used to have problems with, and so did a lot of others.

More here. And here's a short overview video about the Khan Academy [recipient of the 2009 Microsoft Tech Award in Education]

MARY ROACH: 10 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT ORGASM

DUBAI HAMAS ASSASSINATION: HOW IT WAS PLANNED

Duncan Gardham in The Telegraph:

Dressed in tennis gear and carrying racquets and balls, the guests who wandered through the lobby of Dubai’s al-Bustan Rotana hotel on Jan 19 couldn’t have looked less threatening.

But within hours they and nine accomplices had carried out the ruthlessly efficient assassination of the Hamas military Commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who had just a few seconds’ warning of his fate as the killers overpowered him in his room.

The murder bears the hallmarks of a meticulously-planned operation by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, though Israel has so far refused to say whether it was involved.

What is beyond doubt, however, is that the alleged hit team, travelling on forged British, Irish, German and French passports, spent no more than 19 hours in the Gulf state, killing Mr Mabhouh just five hours after he had flown in from Syria.

After trawling through dozens of hours of CCTV footage, investigators have been able to piece together a minute-by-minute reconstruction of how the hit unfolded.

The 11-strong team arrived in Dubai in the early hours of Jan 19 on flights from France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, dressed as businessmen with trolley bags and laptops and blending in perfectly with other passengers.

As they checked into several different hotels, a young woman carrying a false Irish passport in the name of Gail Folliard, was filmed accepting the help of a porter to carry her bag.

More here

HERE'S A RADICAL THOUGHT: LET'S DIFFERENTIATE CHILDHOOD EDUCATION FROM DOG TRAINING!

The photo to the right is of our family dog, Treetree (we stupidly allowed a 2 year old to name her and Treetree is what we ended up with.) She’s a yellow Labrador Retriever, a breed notoriously easy to train. Dog motivation, and particularly Lab motivation is pretty simple: they want to please their owners and extra food is always welcome, and so a carrot and stick approach works very well. They do a good job, they get a treat, they do a bad job and they are scolded. Despite the fact that Treetree is definitely not the smartest dog in the world, and that we were not the most consistent and industrious dog trainers ever, she’s a well trained dog; the carrot and stick approach of “if-then” turns out to be a good way to train a dog, but is it how we should be educating our children?

To recap briefly my argument put forward so far over the last few months: as traditional “left-brained” jobs get automated and outsourced to China and elsewhere, and as these countries themselves start to move into the innovation space, the US and other western countries need to be educating children in a whole new way. We are not educating our children to be creative, innovative, inventive leaders for the 21st century, we are not even improving our ability to compete in traditional left-brained-based activities with other countries. So, now let’s fantasize for a moment that the Department of Education wakes up and realizes how truly lacking the education system in this country is. They do away with standardized, multiple-choice exams; they do away with the traditional grading system until high school; they devise a curriculum that encourages children to be intellectually vibrant, academic risk-takers for life. Even if this were all to happen, I think that there would still be a part of the puzzle that would be missing: how to motivate children in this brave new world.

Continue reading "Here's a radical thought: let's differentiate childhood education from dog training!"

LOVE AND MARRIAGE: A PROFILE OF NANCY AND JOAN

同性婚姻

Zina Saunders interviews my friends Nancy Goldstein and Joan Hilty in RH Reality Check:

I was dismayed earlier this month when the New York State Senate voted down the gay marriage bill, and I decided to interview and paint long-standing gay couples, both men and women, and ask them about their stories and their relationships and what marriage means to them. This is the first of the series.

On a recent rainy afternoon in Brooklyn, I sat down to talk with writer and communications specialist Nancy Goldstein and syndicated cartoonist Joan Hilty, whose marriage in Provincetown in May of 2004 has been recognized in New York State since July of 2006. With their dog Juno trying to get in on the conversation, Nancy and Joan talked about love and marriage.

Joan: We met online in the early, early days of internet dating, in mid-1999. It was on a lesbian/gay dating website called Edwina.com. Its icon was a little guy dressed up as your "Aunt Edwina who only wants the best for you". You could browse other people’s personals, and only get an idea of them through the quality of their writing because there were barely any pictures up yet or videos or songs or anything.

Nancy: The chick you chose me over did have a picture of herself up with a cowboy hat. But she overused the ellipsis.

Joan: Yeah, and no capitalizing, no nothing. But there was Nancy, who wrote beautifully and talked about all the great places she liked to eat in Prospect Heights, which was just a neighborhood away from me, and that one was interesting to me.

全球进入政治体制多元竞争时代

作者/来源：朱云汉 中国时报 http://news.chinatimes.com

人类社会跨入二十一世纪之后，我们熟悉的历史座标逐渐模糊。作为后冷战时期唯一超强的美国，其领导地位出现明显的动摇；西方国家独占历史舞台的时代进入尾声，非西方世界开始全面崛起；经济自由主义一枝独秀的时代也告一段落，强调国家对于市场进行必要管制与干预的思维重获青睐。另外一个明显的变化就是全球民主化的动力明显消退，各种有别于西方自由民主的政治体制活蹦乱跳，并在意识形态领域与民主思潮展开激烈的拔河。

过去三十多年民主化的浪潮曾经横扫全球；从本世纪开始，不少新兴民主陷入挣扎的状态，甚至出现民主体制崩解。

当前许多新兴民主政体出现危机，是因为这些国家实施民主的条件本来就很脆弱，缺乏稳固的民主信念基础与多元社会环境；多数政治菁英只是把民主程序视为一种夺权游戏，民主理念从来不是他们的核心价值。同时，在很多新兴民主国家，多数民众一开始总是对民主体制热烈拥抱，并满怀憧憬；但是当民主的实施经验与他们的期待出现严重落差，而且在可预见的将来看不到转好的可能性时，民众对民主的信心开始动摇。一旦这些国家内部出现经济危机，或是过去有利于民主体制运作的外部环境出现逆转，民主体制就摇摇欲坠。

不久之前，我在智利首都圣底牙哥参加了一场「全球民主动态调查」研讨会，来自五大洲各区域民主动态调查的主持人都关注拉丁美洲的民主前景，因为这个地区的数据令人特别困惑。

总部设在纽约的「自由之家」，最近几年将许多左翼政党掌权的中南美洲国家，从「自由」的评等调降到「部分自由」，原因是这些国家都出现政治强人，透过公民投票修宪，取消总统不得连任的限制，以及赋予总统大幅改造司法机关的权力。同时，强烈批评政府的新闻媒体受到压制，选举的公正性也遭遇反对党的质疑。例如「自由之家」在二○○八年给予委内瑞拉的评等是：公民自由四分（最高为一、最低为七），政治权利四分，两项指标在南美洲都是最低的。

但是享有很高的公信力的「拉丁美洲民主动态调查」，在南美洲进行的社会调查的结果却截然不同。在二○○八年，委内瑞拉公民支持民主的比例是八二％，在南美洲是最高的；委内瑞拉公民对于民主政治运作感到满意是四九％，虽然只占民众的半数，但在南美洲却排名第二，要比该地区三七％的平均满意度高出很多。

为何「自由之家」认为委内瑞拉的民主出现明显的倒退，而高比例的委内瑞拉公民却拥抱他们自己的民主体制，而且仍满意其运作状态？最明显的原因是，查维兹充分运用了新增的总统权力，以及新近收归国有的土地与石油收益，让大量具有原住民血统的经济与社会边缘团体，享受了前所未有的基本生活保障与政治与社会地位提升。相形之下，在一九九八年查维兹上台之前，虽然委内瑞拉已经实施了将近三十年符合形式要件的宪政民主，但是民主不曾矫正过既有的严重社会歧视与不公平问题。

根据「联合国拉丁美洲与加勒比海经济理事会」最新的研究报告指出，从一九九七年到二○○七年十年间，委内瑞拉在两项指标上于拉丁美洲名列前茅。第一，根据客观的金尼指数，委内瑞拉在所得分配上改善的程度在拉丁美洲国家中表现最佳；第二、在主观的所得分配是否公平的指标上，在二○○七年认为所得分配公平的委内瑞拉民众要比一九九七年足足增加了四二％，遥遥领先其他国家。委内瑞拉公民所拥抱的是「社会民主」模式，这个另类民主模式与「自由之家」所推崇的「自由民主」模式，正在这个地区进行激烈的政治拔河。

在可预见的将来，东亚也无法避免多种政治体制竞争的局面。日本的民主体制无力回应经济停滞与人口老化的难题，泰国与菲律宾陷入严重的治理危机，印尼的民主转型尚未竟全功。新加坡的指导式民主，与中国大陆的发展导向威权体制，度过了政治继承与及全球金融危机等多重考验，让政治学者不得不重新评价其调适能力。下一轮政治体制竞赛的重心，在于打造低碳经济与因应巨型自然灾变这两大挑战，何种体制能脱颖而出尚难预料。

作者为台湾大学政治学系教授

IF YOU WANT CHANGE, YOU HAVE TO CHANGE CONGRESS

企业政治献金，已高度扭曲了美国民主政治。看来我国对政治献金的管制，不无道理。

Lawrence Lessig in The Nation:

At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress. Not financially bankrupt, at least not yet, but politically bankrupt. Bush v. Gore notwithstanding, Americans' faith in the Supreme Court remains extraordinarily high--76 percent have a fair or great deal of "trust and confidence" in the Court. Their faith in the presidency is also high--61 percent.

But consistently and increasingly over the past decade, faith in Congress has collapsed--slowly, and then all at once. Today it is at a record low. Just 45 percent of Americans have "trust and confidence" in Congress; just 25 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job. A higher percentage of Americans likely supported the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than support our Congress today.

The source of America's cynicism is not hard to find. Americans despise the inauthentic. Gregory House, of the eponymous TV medical drama, is a hero not because he is nice (he isn't) but because he is true. Tiger Woods is a disappointment not because he is evil (he isn't) but because he proved false. We may want peace and prosperity, but most would settle for simple integrity. Yet the single attribute least attributed to Congress, at least in the minds of the vast majority of Americans, is just that: integrity. And this is because most believe our Congress is a simple pretense. That rather than being, as our framers promised, an institution "dependent on the People," the institution has developed a pathological dependence on campaign cash. The US Congress has become the Fundraising Congress. And it answers--as Republican and Democratic presidents alike have discovered--not to the People, and not even to the president, but increasingly to the relatively small mix of interests that fund the key races that determine which party will be in power.

This is corruption.

More here.

CLOUD CULTURE: THE PROMISE AND THE THREAT Charles Leadbeater

这篇文章提到了 “五毛党”（“50 cents party" para 17)。看来五毛已成国际常识，且无处不在，难怪我国也开始岀现五毛网站！

Charles Leadbeater in Edge

We are about to get a very different kind of Internet, one replete with huge potential and danger. The spread of cloud computing will allow much greater personalisation and mobility, constant real time connection and easier collaboration. Cloud computing will give rise to a cloud culture. Many of the purveyors of that culture will be cloud capitalists. Our chief challenge will be to make cloud culture and cloud capitalism work, for public as well as private good.

The Net we have grown up with was based around data and software stored quite close to where it is used on personal and mainframe computers. That gave people a sense of ownership and control, exploiting cheap local storage because the bandwidth to download data from remote sources was too expensive and unreliable. The Net was a way for us easily to link these disparate and disconnected machines, with their separate data and software. In the world of cloud computing our data — emails, documents, pictures, songs — would be stored remotely in a digital cloud hanging above us, always there for us to access from any device we like: computer, television, games console, handheld and mobile, embedded in our kitchen table, bathroom mirror or car dashboard. We should be able to access our data from anywhere, thanks to always on broadband and draw down as much or as little as and when we need. Instead of installing software on our computer we would pay for it only when we needed it.

More here.

淡马锡薪酬计划堪为华尔街之师

在

薪酬方面，华尔街可以向新加坡取取经。

大银行和证券公司的高额奖金引起了前所未有的争议。各国政府都在采取行动，开征奖金税并制定新规，迫使银行薪酬主管改变给员工付薪的方式。

新加坡淡马锡控股(Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd.)可以就这个问题为他们上一课。

▀ 淡马锡薪酬计划堪为华尔街之师

中共元老要求平反刘晓波案

据香港《明报》报道，20名中共部级、局级离休元老近日联名签署致中共中央公开信，要求纠正对刘晓波案的“违法错判”。

公开信批评说，北京市第一中级法院的一审判决在事实和说理两方面都不能令人信服，是以司法名义损害中共的改革开放形象。

公开信建议中央采取实际步骤，敦促法院撤消对刘晓波的一审判决。

20名联名元老平均年龄超过80岁，平均党龄超过60年。

其中包括96岁的前毛泽东秘书李锐、90岁的新华社前副社长李普、87岁的新闻出版总署前署长杜导正、著名散文家袁鹰和著名诗人及评论家邵燕祥等。

不应以言治罪

公开信尖锐指出，一审判决有关刘晓波的头条罪状是“对党和政府的不满”，但人民既然有责任监督政府，也就有权利表达不满，执政者怎能以“不满”治罪呢？

公开信还指出，法院判决把“建立中华联邦共和国”列为刘晓波第二条罪状。可“建立联邦共和国”曾作为中共的重要主张载入中共第二次和第七次全国代表大会文献，怎么刘晓波一重复就成了罪行？

公开信质问，即使刘晓波的主张完全错误，那也与犯罪无关。中国宪法保护言论自由，难道只保护正确言论的自由？

公开信还说，执政者应该善闻批评之声，尊重不平之鸣，把各种不满化作动力，从而改善工作，获取民心，而不应把不同意见者当作敌人。

温家宝鼓励讲真话

无巧不成书。中国政府网周一（2月1日）全文刊出了总理温家宝09年11月的一次讲话全文，鼓励人们“要讲真话”。

温家宝说，当前要营造一种包容和宽松的环境，使人们能够独立思考，敢讲真话。

温家宝说，有些真话，虽然领导不爱听，但确有价值，因为它包含真理。领导者应有听取逆耳之言的雅量，去除思维定势，包容不同意见，择其善者而从之。

温家宝还举了春秋时期齐威王颁布命令征求批评意见的例子。并说，封建时代的政治家尚能如此，共产党人应当做得更好。

分析人士指出，对比中国政府对刘晓波一案的处理，温家宝总理的讲话不免显得“叶公好龙”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/index.shtml

DIALOGUE, DEBATE OR DISAGREEMENT? HOW USEFUL IS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ‘EAST’ AND ‘WEST’ IN TODAY’S WORLD?

If it was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who preached that the East and the West are inseparable, it was Rudyard Kipling who became famous for advocating the idea of their perpetual incompatibility. Today, the foremost characteristic of any East-West discourse continues to be a wrangle over a mutual cultural misunderstanding. The ‘West’, the East Asian studies scholar Martin Bernal has suggested, is as much a construction as the ‘East’ of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Likewise, Victor David Hanson, the author of the influential book Why the West has Won: Carnage and Culture fron Salamis to Vietnam, wrote in 2002 that “the East continues to stereotype the West, with not a clue about its intrinsic nature.” Hanson mockingly portrayed non-Westerners as baffled by a “mysterious Western paradigm – the freedom to speak freely”. For Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma, Occidentalism, or the popular understanding of Western cultures, constitutes “a cluster of images and ideas of the West in the minds of its haters”. They infer that what is really hated about the West by those who only know it from afar is its secularity and rationalism. But do such vague notions on either side really hold any water in today’s globalised context?

More here.